The U.S. Postal Service can legally enter into negotiated service agreements with mailers only if they are mutually beneficial, available to others and are reviewed before the public, the Postal Rate Commission said in a report to Congress.
The report, made public Thursday, was filed with the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the Senate Government Affairs Committee and the House Government Reform Committee on Monday.
There was no immediate comment from the chairmen of those committees, the PRC, postal officials or consumer watchdog groups who, in opposition to negotiated agreements, allege they give preferential treatment to mass mailers over regular mail users.
The PRC’s report said that while there is nothing in the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 (PRA) that “explicitly authorizes or prohibits” the USPS from entering into such agreements, the legality of an agreement may depend on whether the contract is executed without regulatory scrutiny, or instead submitted for some form of review by the PRC.
Several postal reform bills introduced in the House over the last five years, but never passed, would have clarified the issue, giving the USPS the authority to negotiate rate and service contracts with mass mailers.
According to the PRC’s report, other sections of the PRA “cast into doubt” the postal service’s belief that its authority to enter into the agreements are “sufficiently broad to encompass changes in rates or mail classifications by agreement alone.”
While noting that the PRA requires the USPS to obtain PRC endorsement before changing postal rates or mail classifications, the PRC said there is nothing in the law “against the postal service and mail users negotiating and reaching consensus as to how rates or conditions of service should be changed.”
The report also reaffirmed the authority of the postal service to legally develop and test new products and services without prior PRC review in certain circumstances.
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